AMMAN — The events in Palestine Monday highlighted dramatically the reasons why representatives from a dozen research centers in the Arab World, Europe and the United States gathered in Amman this week to explore the issue of reforming Arab armed forces and security agencies. When men with guns, in uniform or not, roam the streets and shoot at buildings that house parliament and security offices, you know you have a serious problem.
Hamas gunmen Monday fired rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank rockets at the Gaza headquarters of the Fateh-dominated Preventive Security Forces; in return Fateh gunmen in Ramallah burned the Palestinian parliament and cabinet buildings in Ramallah. This spectacle of military forces taking to the street, shooting people, and burning public offices they believe to be controlled by their rivals brings that society closer to the point where armed gangs and party militias effectively take over the political process.
This reflects the wider problem that has plagued many Arab societies for much of the past half a century: Who holds power and makes policy in Arab countries, elected civilian authorities or gunmen on the street?
The Amman gathering of research institutions exploring the issue of Arab security sector reform is the first multinational effort of its kind that is driven by non-governmental groups, under the aegis of the one-year-old Arab Reform Initiative. It comes at a particularly pertinent moment, when armed groups, private armies, neighborhood gangs, and party militias seem to be a growth industry throughout the Middle East.
In some ways, events in Palestine merely follow the same experience that defined many other Arab countries in their early years, when prominent families or tribes with their armed men seized power and ran their countries like private fiefs. It is fascinating in this respect to see Iraq repeating this pattern, as armed militias of the main political, ethnic or religious groups play an increasingly important role in state formation — in this case, state re-formation. Families and tribes with their private militias are a common precursor to statehood in much of the Arab world.
The intimate structural links between armed forces, security agencies and ruling families and elites in the Arab world is one of the defining characteristics of this region. It explains in part why we have countries where individuals rule for 30 or 40 years at a time and often pass on incumbency to their children. Breaking this cycle requires transforming the national military and security organizations into bodies that protect national security and sovereignty, rather than enforce the rule of a few men and their cousins.
It has become clear, therefore, that security sector reform is imperative if other reforms — economic, political, social — are to have a chance of succeeding in Arab lands. The cost of not reforming is high. In countries where a ruling elite or family uses the military to maintain its hold on power, the result is stagnation, corruption and tensions due to abuse of power, as we have witnessed in recent decades in Iraq, Syria, Libya and other such systems. In less developed or poorer countries where incumbent leaders make the military or private armies their main source of legitimacy, governance systems break down, leading to chaos and lawlessness, such as Somalia, and, in a slightly different version, Lebanon and Yemen during their civil wars. In Palestine today, we also see the common habit of trying to dictate political policy through the use of gunmen on the streets.
Reforming Arab security sectors will be a long-term project, as men with guns do not easily give them up, or share power with civilian bodies like parliaments, political parties, or courts. Two other constraints stand in the way of bringing security systems under the control of civilian authorities.
The first is the need for efficient security agencies to fight terrorism, corruption and other plagues that threaten most of the Middle East. We are reminded that security is a legitimate and crucial task, and it is best performed by professional agencies working closely with elected civilian bodies, according to laws enforced by an independent judiciary.
The second is that if foreign countries, especially the United States, adopt security sector reform as a primary goal — as they have done in Palestine and Iraq — the consequences are likely to be negative. Any goal that is seen to emanate from Western capitals, no matter how good or appropriate it may be (e.g., democracy, human rights, free press) is likely to generate stiff resistance in Arab societies that are fed up with being manipulated and reconfigured by Western armies.
The security organizations of the Arab world tend to be very secretive bodies, so their own views and concerns are not well known. What do we know, for example, about the political sentiments of the Fateh and Hamas gunmen burning public buildings in Ramallah and Gaza? Are they fighting for a noble concept of an independent Palestine living in democracy, freedom and peace? Or are they more interested in holding on to power and sharing the material spoils of incumbency?
This is why it is so important to engage the security services and armed forces in deep dialogue, and bring them out of the shadows.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star, published throughout the Middle East with the International Herald Tribune.
Copyright ©2006 Rami G. Khouri / Agence Global
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Released: 14 June 2006
Word Count: 861
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